Historic Old Town Bar and Grill in Eureka is a love landmark for some couples

When Marna Powell opened the newspaper on Jan. 22, she began to well up with tears -- happy, grateful tears.

She could hardly believe the news -- the Old Town Bar and Grill building, having been severely damaged in the Jan. 9 earthquake and slated for demolition, was going to be spared the wrecking ball. It's not just that Powell had spent years working in the place or that the 100-year-old structure is a landmark in Eureka's Old Town, it was that the building was a landmark in Powell's life. It's the place she met the love of her life in 1988, and the place where she proposed to him three years later.

As couples around Humboldt County celebrate Valentine's Day today, it's a fair bet a handful of them will reminisce fondly about the old building, and maybe even raise a glass to Kurt Kramer, who stepped in to purchase the building in its 11th hour with plans to repair, refurbish and restore the place to its old luster.

The old brick building on Second Street has sat vacant for years, but was once the epicenter of Eureka's night life, having housed a dime-a-dance joint in the 1920s, a beer hall and a tavern, all before being reborn in the late 1970s as Old Town Bar and Grill, with a restaurant, a bar and a jumping music venue.

"I think probably a million people hooked up there over the years," said Michael Powell, Marna's husband. "Some of them even stayed together."

Eric and Viviana Hollenbeck, owners of Blue Ox Millworks, are such a couple.

It was a night in late February 1976 and Viviana had been called in to fill an evening shift on the wait staff at the Old Town Bar and Grill. She knew Eric Hollenbeck would be coming in to meet some friends for dinner, but didn't think much of it. She'd met Eric a few weeks before, and hadn't been terribly impressed.

She was less impressed when Eric strolled in more than two hours late for his reservation, well after the kitchen had closed. In Eric's words, "a few things came up, and I had had a few beers." In Viviana's words, Eric was "snockered."

Nonetheless, Viviana scrounged up what she could find in the kitchen, some soup, to feed Eric and his party. Afterward, she joined them, and some mutual friends, in the bar.

As their compatriots shared some light conversation, Eric leaned over to Viviana and asked her out to dinner.

Having heard the request, Viviana's friend Bonnie Gould leaned over and, in a whisper loud enough for everyone to hear, told Viviana to say yes, on the caveat that Eric bring Gould along as well. They set a date to meet at Merriman's in Trinidad, only Gould never showed, leaving Eric and Viviana to dine alone.

"She set the whole thing up and didn't come," Eric said.

The couple moved in together six weeks later, and were married within a year and a half.

"It wasn't like the fireworks that everyone tells you about," Viviana said of the couple's meeting. "It was just a very deep understanding of each other. It was just meant to be."

For his part, Eric said he saw fireworks. He also remains eternally grateful for the beers he imbibed before heading over to Old Town Bar and Grill that fateful February night.

"Because of the couple of beers, I had the courage to talk to Viviana, because she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life," Eric said. "She was just a knockout, and she still is (33) years later."

With the 33rd anniversary of their first date approaching, Viviana said she and Eric were deeply saddened to hear news of the damage the Old Town Bar and Grill building had sustained in the quake, and of plans to tear the place down.

"It just felt like a part of your heart was being taken away," she said.

Marna Powell felt similarly, having met Michael in the same building some 22 years ago, on Memorial Day weekend in 1988.

"I remember being on the dance floor with someone and looking across the room and seeing Michael," Marna recalled this week. "Some part of me just fell in love at first sight. I was just, 'I want that one right there.'"

But, when she looked up again, Michael was gone, as he was under age at the time and had been chased off by a bouncer.

"He was trying to throw me out, but I kept sneaking back in there," Michael recalled, adding that he noticed Marna immediately.

The two eventually wound up talking a bit, just long enough for Michael to learn that Marna was working at the Red Lion Inn's bar, and to make off with Marna's leopard print scarf. The next day, Michael used the scarf as an excuse to show up at Marna's place of work and ask her out.

"It just seemed like our destiny, so to speak," Michael said.

"We started going out the very next day," Marna added. "We got married three years later. There had just never been anybody I got along with so well and loved so much. ... There was just some kind of magnetic attraction."

A couple of years later, having already turned down a couple of Michael's marriage proposals, Marna invited him to join her for dinner at Old Town Bar and Grill, saying she had something she wanted to show him. It was a marriage proposal of her own, and he quickly said yes.

Both couples said they are ecstatic that the landmark in their personal love lives is being saved, and talked wistfully of some day returning to the old building to sit down for a night of dinner and memories.

Eric Hollenbeck said Kramer is giving a gift to the community in restoring the building. He said he just hopes a restaurant is in the plans.

"We may repeat our vows in that restaurant, if it were to open," he said.